• gloss@discuss.tchncs.de
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    9 months ago

    This guy is like the anti-Bill Nye. He doesn’t want to share his joy of science with you, he doesn’t want to educate, he just wants to correct you with some stupid ass analogy. Insufferable. No one asked, Neil.

    • AbsurdityAccelerator@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I remember seeing some clip where he schooled a batista about some whipped cream that’s melted. Niel, they are just trying to get through their day while not making enough money. They don’t need a thermodynamics lessons in the middle of the shift.

      • ditty@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        I know it’s autocorrect or a typo but it’s amusing to imagine Neil DeGrasse Tyson schooling the deceased Cuban dictator on melted whipped cream

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Maybe he’s trying to do some deadpan humor. I say obvious shit like this to my daughter all the time. Like the thing he’s “correcting” here is that metaphors shouldn’t be taken literally. It’s so obvious that I have to conclude there’s a high chance he’s just trying to do a self-parody here.

        • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          If he gets a kick out of it and people think he’s serious each time, why not do it more often? IMO that’s a great way to deal with some people vocally not liking you: lean into it to fuck with them.

          Like with this one, what would it even look like to someone who believed in literal leap days? It’s a position I have trouble even imagining. Are there even people who hold this position that he’s correcting? Would he have any reason to believe anyone needs this correction?

          • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee
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            9 months ago

            Assuming that this is the only manifestation of this sort of behavior, sure. It could be a dry sense of humor playing off of taking common turns of speech literally. But he’s been repeatedly shown to be a wholly unpleasant, needlessly pedantic asshole with a superiority complex in his public and personal life. Peoples intolerance of his tweets aren’t only informed by those tweets, they’re also shaped by years of insufferable drivel coming out of his mouth, said seriously and with intent.

            I love dry humor and wordplay. This isn’t either of those things. He actually thinks people are that stupid and need a lesson on leap years. His reason is as follows: I’m Neil deGrasse Tyson and I’m better than everyone. People don’t know what I know and I’m going to bless them with my genius in 180 characters or less. Please clap.

            • EvilLootbox@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              remember when the Daily Show in the old Jon Stewart days tried to push him as a correspondent for awhile? It was completely intolerable, the man does not understand comedy at all.

            • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Yeah, I’m not trying to say he is definitely joking. But it is something I’d do if I were in his position, so I can’t discount the possibility that he is trolling with some of these.

    • bisby@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I know someone who got to interview him once. He spent the whole time complaining about how he never wanted to be a celebrity and just wanted to do the science part of the job and that he hated having to do interviews and talk to the public.

      They wound up obviously having no good material from the interview and didn’t have anything to run. It was a very “don’t meet your heroes” moment for my friend.

      But yeah, according to himself, he DOESN’T want to share science or educate. It’s a burden to him.

    • clearleaf@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      It’s amazing how far this guy got as a complete hack. The way people turned on him wasn’t triggered by some dark secret being revealed. Everybody just had their own moment of thinking “wait a second, is this person actually a huge dipshit? Oh my god he is.” I never saw conversations about it or any kind of viral anti NDT sentiment spreading around. It’s just a conclusion everyone reached by themselves. It’s like he had some kind of spell on everyone and ran out of mana around 2015 or so.

  • Rozaŭtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    9 months ago

    “In English, we don’t have a word for spicy” - Neil touchgrass Tyson at a linguistics conference.

    I’m starting to suspect that being good at astrophysics doesn’t mean you’re automatically the best at everything else too.

  • Zozano
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    9 months ago

    Can we ease up on the Neil hate?

    It’s not like we give Elmo shit for telling everyone a triangle has three sides.

    Neil is the modern lowest common denominator for encouraging an interest in science.

      • Zozano
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        9 months ago

        Sure, but what do his dumb tweets have to do with that?

        Also, some of the allegations are very, very dumb.

        “Sexual misconduct” because he moved a bit of her T-shirt on her shoulder as she was showing Neil her tattoo? Stupid.

        Another saying Neil was making sexual advances to her after she went up to his apartment alone for a drink. You don’t say??

        From the apparent quotes, he was utterly polite about it all, he didn’t throw himself at her.

        I’m no NGT fan. My comment was a jab at his fanbase being similar to Elmo’s. He’s a pop-culture scientist, yet everyone acts like he’s the stupidest Mensa member, when he doesn’t even qualify.

          • Zozano
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            9 months ago

            My point stands.

            Children don’t give a shit about philosophy.

            He’s a science communicator, yet you’re treating him like he’s a genius.

            He’s a pop-culture scientist.

  • mrmanager@lemmy.today
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    9 months ago

    Tyson is an incredibly unpleasant person though. It’s hard to see past his shitty personality.

  • Clent@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Actually, it’s not a leap because it’s neither upwards or forwards.

    The orbit is already ahead of our count so we add a day is moving us backwards along the orbital count.

    If we removed a day then that missing day would be a leap day as we leap over it to the next day in the calendar.

    So really this is the non-leap since we’re counting it, it’s all the other years that don’t have a 29th that are leap years because we’re leaping over the 29th day of February.

  • AdisonTrent@feddit.de
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    9 months ago

    But, don’t we just like wait a day for the orbit to catch up with our slightly to short calendar?!

  • CaptainProton@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    No no no, calendar is stopping, so March 1 can be a day later. We’re not jumping, we’re waiting for some time to pass before resuming counting.

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    He could have posted something about how the universe doesn’t fit our preconceived ideas and how this day is an example of that and that this means you should dig deeper to get to the truth because it’s usually a lot more complex than what it seems.

    But no, Neil woke up and chose dumbassery

    • cheesymoonshadow@lemmings.world
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      9 months ago

      That’s exactly what he’s trying to do. He likes to poke holes at commonly accepted things in an attempt to make people think about stuff that they don’t normally think about and make them ask why more often. This is a good thing. Unfortunately, it just comes across as annoying to a lot of people.